Lindy, I've been a Greenie since about 1959 when somebody cut down some large macrocarpa trees on my parent's property boundary [it might have been my parents for all I know]. Also, from a year or two later when sewage was poured into the Manukau Harbour, along with blood and offal from abattoirs, oil and goop from Pacific Steel, and trucks of city rubbish tipped directly into the harbour to fill it up, and on learning about how poisonous lead is... etc.
Which doesn't mean I salute any Red-Greenie flag run up the flag-pole by somebody trying to grab power and money.
The latest oil price rise and the ranting in NZ about it is amusing. Politicians are now having to cut back on their sacred noblesse-oblige intentions to lead the world in saving it from the scourge of CO2 as actual hunger and poverty looms larger in average minds than a theoretical 50cm tide rise in half a century or two, along with a theoretical 3 degree Celsius temperature rise for which the average Kiwi would be grateful.
The politicians/electorates have achieved all the bad outcomes.
The price of petrol is over $2 a litre [about US$6 per USgallon]
CO2 is rampant
Taxes are high on everything
Economic debilitation is on us
Islamic Jihad has all the money they could wish for
Islamic Jihad has many aficionados in New Zealand [silly immigration decisions]
But NZ is trivial despite pretensions to grandeur by politicians and others. The USA could learn from NZ's foolishness.
Long ago, NZ should have taxed imported fuels very heavily. They arrived in super tankers which were easily measured, controlled etc. Taxes on cyberspace should have been made zero or reduced by the same amount that fuel was taxed.
That would have:
-Cut consumption
-Caused people to invent alternative fuels and technologies.
-Cut Islamic Jihad funding
-Reduced CO2 [if we are worried about that which I'm not]
-Boosted local economic activity instead of Islamic Jihad economic activity.
-Made NZ a cyberspace super-centre with huge economic results.
It's a bit late this time around to raise fuel taxes and cut other taxes. But as prices fall again, which they will do, taxes should be raised, and lowered, to keep imported fuel prices constant.
Recommendation = adopt such a tax system in the USA. A country is still its borders [though I plan to change that]. The border is the best place to raise taxes.
Protecting borders is the first principle of being a country - preferably by having relations with neighbours meaning no protection is necessary, but that's tricky sometimes [such as in Israel where Amendiejihad and hordes of others have sworn to destroy Israel]
It seems odd to ship ship-loads of money to Islamic Jihad in exchange for ship-loads of oil when they use that money to attack you [killing the goose that lays the golden eggs is considered a good thing in Islam].
Cutting swarms of taxes and subsidies would be a good thing too [such as ethanol subsidies and laws].
Mqurice |
